Taking Your Medicine: Love Magic and the Body in Colonial Yucatán

Love magic was a vital part of the everyday experience of disease and healing in colonial Yucatán. Maya, Afro-Yucatecan, and Spanish healers throughout the colonial period used an array of potions, powders, and other ingestibles not only to heal the sick, but also to help colonial Yucatecans attract the amorous attentions of the opposite sex. This lecture explores the variety of medicines and ingested materials used in healing and love magic by colonial Yucatecans, paying particular attention to the preparation and consumption of plant and animal materials in the practice of love magic.

Rebekah Martin is a doctoral student in the Department of History at Penn State, specializing in Colonial Latin American history. Her research focuses on the social history of medicine in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Yucatán with a special interest in Maya and Afro-Mexican healing.

This lecture is a part of the Center for Global Studies Brown Bag Graduate Lecture Series which focuses on interdisciplinary graduate research.

College Town Film Festival 2014

Sponsored by the Center for Global Studies, College of Communications, College of the Liberal Arts, Communication Arts and Sciences, Department of Film/Video and Media Studies, Department of Philosophy, Department of Women’s Studies, Institute for Arts and Humanities, Office of the Provost, Paterno Fellows Program, Presidential Leadership Academy, Schreyer Honors College, and the Social Thought Program.

Global Capitalism and the Crisis of Humanity

The lecture will focus on the negatives stemming from global capitalism and how it is affecting our world. According to Robinson, “The immense inequalities of the global political economy cannot easily be contained through consensual mechanisms of social control; we have been witnessing transitions from social welfare to social control states around the world.” He argues that we are facing violent consequences of these economic disparities and will explain why during his April 9th lecture.

This lecture is sponsored by Latina/o Studies and the Center for Global Studies

China-Constitution-Politics

The conference will consider issues of Chinese constitutional law and politics and consider the current movement of government and popular sentiment. Featured Speakers include Professor Zhiwei Tong, one of China's most well known public intellectuals and a Professor at the East China University of Political Science and Law. Anyone interested in current developments in Chinese politics, law and culture will find the proceedings of interest.

This lecture is sponsored by the School of International Affairs, the Center for Global Studies, the Center for Democratic Deliberation, the Rock Ethics Institute, and the Coalition for Peace and Ethics.

Literacy in Mobility: Negotiation of Literacies across Transnational Contexts

Most of the research on academic literacies is based on nation-state orientation (Wimmer and Schiller) despite the reality of increasingly interdependent world. Studies based only on one’s location might not be feasible as they often fail to connect to the transnational experiences of the learners. As a part of the bigger study, this presentation explores the ways migrant students negotiate language and literacies across transnational contexts. It reports on a case study of Gyan, a Bhutanese Refugee student who negotiates literacies across diverse academic settings in both Nepal and US. Informed by literacy as a social practice, transnational literacies, and mobility, findings suggest we need to explore the connection between transnational mobility and students' multilingual repertoire as both are essential in negotiating local and global literacies in the transnational world.

Madhav Kafle is a doctoral candidate in Applied Linguistics at The Pennsylvania State University. He has taught English in rural Nepal and currently teaches academic writing at Penn State. His research interests include multilingual writing, global spread of English, and critical pedagogy.

This lecture is a part of the Center for Global Studies Brown Bag Graduate Lecture Series which focuses on interdisciplinary graduate research.

German Day 2014

The Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures at Penn State University invites middle school and high school German students to German Day 2014 - "Wir sind alle Ausländer - fast überall!" It will be a fun-filled day of German language activities, including a poster and movie competition, a spelling bee, poetry recitation and a German trivia game. Students will also have the opportunity to practice their German (and earn prizes!), learn more about studying German at Penn State, visit a German language class, and get a tour of campus lead by current undergraduate students. http://www.psu.edu/dept/germanday

Memory Balloons: Algerian Comic Strips and Franco-Algerian Memory

Soon after the end of the Algerian war and the birth of Algeria as a nation-state, the Algerian cultural scene bloomed. The comic strip magazine M’Quidech published between 1960 and 1972 in both French and Arabic is a good illustration of the new art forms embraced by Algerian artists to define and display their creativity. Inspired by the events of the Algerian war and of the hundred and thirty years of colonization M’Quidech’s creators found a modern and popular media to draw not only their memory of Franco-Algerian relations but also to set for themselves the stereotypes of Algeria and its people. I analyze how the many comic motifs displayed in M’Quidèch redefine Algeria and its relations to France taking into account the socio-political complexities which appeared as both countries were adjusting to their new ‘postcolonial’ reality.

Sandra Rousseau is a doctoral student in the department of French and Francophone studies. Her dissertation entitled “Memory’s Laughter: Franco-Algerian Relations through Humor (1954-2012)” examines how art forms such as theater, cartoons, comic strip or performances have relied on comic motifs to deal with the traumas of Franco-Algerian relationships. The research for her dissertation has been supported by two grants from the Center for Global Studies, Naomi A. Fischer Dissertation Enhancement Award in the College of the Liberal Arts. Her research interests include contemporary France, memory of wars, humor and popular culture.

This lecture is a part of the Center for Global Studies Brown Bag Graduate Lecture Series which focuses on interdisciplinary graduate research.

Cultivating Dismodernity: The Meanings of Maize and Agricultural Development in Mexico’s Central Highlands

Agricultural development programs in Mexico have been consistently pushing for the replacement of traditional maize cultivars with “improved”, “modern” scientifically-bred varieties for over 70 years, and yet the overwhelming majority of Mexican maize area remains planted with farmer-bred varieties to this day. The country’s Central Highland region is home to some of the world’s foremost centers of maize research, and also to maize-cultivating peasant communities that, though oriented to commercial production, consistently decline to cultivate commercial seed in favor of diverse varieties that they have maintained for generations. Drawing on ethnographic research and oral histories with local maize farmers, agricultural extension agents, and research scientists, this talk will explore how conflicting and contextually-inflected interpretations of modernity and tradition have shaped the agricultural landscape in a region where maize is a primary source of food security, livelihood, cultural identity, and biodiversity.

Emma Gaalaas Mullaney is a dual-degree PhD Candidate in Geography and Women’s Studies. Her dissertation research has been made possible by support from the National Science Foundation, the Society of Women Geographers, the Institute of International Education Boren Fellowship Program, Specialty Groups of the Association of American Geographers, the Center for Global Studies, and several other departments and institutes at Penn State. Since 2010, Emma has also served as a Youth Delegate to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and Commission on the Status of Women (CSW).

This lecture is a part of the Center for Global Studies Brown Bag Graduate Lecture Series which focuses on interdisciplinary graduate research.

Global Rhetorics and Global Intersections: The Old and the New

This presentation examines older forms of globalization as it has happened in the latter half of the 20th century and newer developments in the past decade or so in the 21st century. While doing so, it examines the role technology played in enabling older forms of globalization in the 20th century and how technology once again has currently made it possible for newer forms of globalization to develop in the past decade or so in the 21st century. The presentation will analyze some of the new global rhetorics, intersections, and trends that that have emerged in global formations such as the larger global south, BRICS, etc. It will also study the role of communication and writing in maintaining new global formations and trends. Of particular interest will be various modes of communication leading to the production, dissemination, framing, and reframing of information, and disinformation in various ways. Of similar interest will be the manner in which information is artificially regulated in some places and its impact on the manner in which globalization occurs in those contexts.

Dr. Joseph Jeyaraj is visiting faculty in the English Department at The Pennsylvania State University. He specializes in Technical and Professional Writing and Communication and the larger field of Writing and Rhetoric, Engineering Communication, Postcolonial Theory, and on matters related to cross cultural communication and globalization. He has published in various places some of which are College Composition and Communication,Journal of Business and Technical Communication, Technical Writing Quarterly, and Pretexts: Literary and Cultural Studies. His latest work, "Engineering and Narrative: Literary Prerequisites as Indirect Communication for Technical Writing," is forthcoming in Journal of Technical Writing and Communication 44.2 (2014).

Castling the King: Institutional Sequencing and Regime Change

An increasing focus in the comparative research on modern autocracies is on the institutions by which different forms of authoritarianism govern. In terms of formal political institutions--the rules and expectations by which politics is conducted and society operates--non-democracies have displayed a remarkable diversity and survivability. This study attempts to explain the relative benefits of authoritarian institutions--particularly the legislature--in situations with high uncertainty.

Matthew Wilson is an advanced doctoral student in the Department of Political Science at Penn State. The research for his dissertation has been supported by a grant from the Center for Global Studies, the Penn State Center for Democracy Studies, the College of Liberal Arts, and the National Science Foundation. His research interests include the study of authoritarianism, comparative political institutions, and democratization. His present work concerns domestic conflict and the prospects for peace and stability. He is also focused on political methodology, particularly as it regard issues of time dependence. He has a regional interest in the politics of Latin America.

This lecture is a part of the Center for Global Studies Brown Bag Graduate Lecture Series which focuses on interdisciplinary graduate research.

Turkey: Challenges, Predicaments, Opportunities, and Prospects

Professor Sukran Nilvana Atadeniz is Dean of The School of Economics and Administrative Sciences at Yeditepe University. She has published research papers on Production Planning & Control, Quality, and Supply Chain Management. She has also served as a supply chain consultant to various global firms. After an historical overview of the economic and social issues leading to the current state of affairs in Turkey, Dr. Atadeniz will provide some insight into the Turkish higher education system and Yeditepe University.

Careers in Geopolitical Intelligence and Analysis

Are you a student with a strong passion for international affairs and information analysis? If so, come and learn from experts in the field about what it takes to succeed in intelligence and what critical skills potential employers are looking for.

Our featured speakers are:

Don Shemanksi, 23-year veteran of the United States' Foreign Service including postings in Italy, Cyprus, Germany, and Pakistan

John Hodgson, Principal Investigator for the Strategic and Global Security Proram and the Project Manager for Office of Military and Security Programs

Scott Gartner, Professor of International Affairs and researcher in the fields of U.S. national security and wartime assessment

Creating the Self and Artistic Production in Immigration: Les Films Albatros in Montreuil and Association CRICAO in Toulouse

Is there such a thing as “true identity”? Is it created or discovered? Is it a solitary endeavor of an individual consciousness to achieve its “authentic state”, as thought Martin Heidegger, or is it a continuous work both conditioned and necessitated by the relationship with the other, as suggested Emmanuel Lévinas? Is it ever-lasting or ever-changing? All these questions are essential for any attempt to approach the role of creativity in the process of self-identification. Artistic production, and specifically, artistic production in immigration or exile, is not an exception to be considered separately from everyday life, but an example that can clarify human way of being in the world. This presentation will attempt to demonstrate the possibility to consider creativity as one of the fundamental elements of human condition, which in its turn would allow seeing art as an integral part of our everyday existence rather than an exceptional activity for the chosen few. Two research cases that will help to support and illustrate the theory are those of Russian filmmakers who worked in Montreuil and Paris in 1920s and 1930s – Les Films Albatros, and musicians and storytellers from Francophone Africa in nowadays Toulouse – Association CRICAO.

Anna is a doctoral candidate (ABD) in the Department of French and Francophone Studies, whose dissertation treats the questions of creativity, self-identification, and artistic production in immigration. Her main research interests include performance theory, philosophy of art, theater studies and film theory. She has long been fascinated by the process of myth-creation and published an article related to the subject in the Cahiers du Monde Russe (46/1-2, January-June 2005, p. 297-304) entitled “Aleksandr Nevskii: Hagiography and National Biography”.

This lecture is a part of the Center for Global Studies Brown Bag Graduate Lecture Series which focuses on interdisciplinary graduate research.

Film screening: Girl Rising

The film Girl Rising aims to raise awareness and advocate for eliminating the barriers to education for girls in developing countries. When a girl is educated, the cycle of poverty can be broken in just one generation, however, millions of girls around the world face barriers to education that boys do not. When these barriers are removed-such as early and forced marriage, domestic slavery, sex trafficking, and gender violence- a girl has access to a better life for herself, her family, her community, and creates a safer and more prosperous world for all.

The film follows nine girls in developing countries who have faced a number of barriers to their education, such as bond labor, sexual assault, and early marriage. Most of the girls featured in the film are currently obtaining an education while a few are among the 66 million girls currently out of school (2012 EFA Global Monitoring Report).Their stories are told through the words of an acclaimed writer from her native country. All of the stories are true although the writer had some liberty when deciding what she wanted to highlight. Girl Rising captures each girl’s dreams, their voices, and their remarkable lives despite being born into unforgivable circumstances.

This film is at the center of the “Girl Rising” campaign of the same name, which has traveled around the world to witness strength of the human spirit and the power of education to change the world. When one girl in a developing country is educated, she is able to build a strong foundation for generations to come. The campaign is a grassroots global action movement that has established relationships with nonprofit organizations that drive donations to programs that help girls get in school and stay in school. They work together to change minds, lives, and policy so all girls receive what they deserve: an education and a better life.

Family Night: Owls give a Whoot

Join the teams at Penn State's America Reads and Center for Global Studies as we explore the topic of nutrition through story time, educational hands-on activities, and an exploration of global issues and concepts. Free Admission to the Discovery Space exhibits only during Family Nights.

The Persian Period at Ashkelon in Light of Recent Excavations

The ancient city of Ashkelon, a large port on the coast of modern Israel, played a critical role in trade networks that spanned the Mediterranean world. However, even as the city prospered because of these international connections, its economic significance also caused it to become entangled in broader political conflicts. In the late Iron Age, the Neo-Babylonians destroyed Ashkelon, and the site lay abandoned under ash and debris until it was rebuilt during the Persian Period. Recent work at Ashkelon by the Leon Levy Expedition has focused on clarifying the nature of this settlement. This talk presents recent finds from the excavation of a Persian Period neighborhood at Ashkelon and explores the significance of this material for the political and economic history of the southern Levant.

Sara Hoffman is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History and the Department of Classics & Ancient Mediterranean Studies at Penn State. She is also a member of the archaeological field staff of the Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon. Her research interests include contacts between Egypt and the Levant, political rhetoric in the prophetic literature of the Hebrew Bible, and ancient Near Eastern economy.

This lecture is a part of the Center for Global Studies Brown Bag Graduate Lecture Series which focuses on interdisciplinary graduate research.

Family Night: Pumpkins

Join the teams at Penn State's America Reads and Center for Global Studies for story time, educational hands-on activities, and an exploration of global issues and concepts. Free Admission to the Discovery Space exhibits only during Family Nights.

Inconsistent input and amount of exposure: child language acquisition of Fering, a dialect of North Frisian

Sociolinguistics has focused on how children master variability in language, predictable alternations like the differences between “I will eat my vegetables” and “I’m gonna eat my vegetables”. However, little research has explored how children learn inconsistency, or unpredictable aspects of language. Recent findings using mini-artificial languages suggest that when presented with inconsistent input, adults match the statistical patterns in their input, whereas children regularize inconsistency. That is, children produce a more systematic language rather than continuing inconsistency (Hudson Kam & Newport, 2005, 2009). However, these studies are limited by their scope and cannot determine whether regularization represents a general pattern of acquisition or only its early stages. Therefore, I present research from a study on child acquisition of morphology in Fering, a dialect of the minority language North Frisian spoken in northern Germany, thus testing the previous findings in a naturalistic environment. By investigating the acquisition of the inconsistently produced feature grammatical gender by children with varying levels of input, this research distinguishes between the roles of inconsistency and quantity of input.

Originally from Southern California, Alison Eisel Hendricks earned her B.A. in Philosophy with a minor in German from Occidental College. She is currently a fifth year PhD. student in Language Science and German Applied Linguistics at Penn State. With support from the Fulbright Commission, the Center for Global Studies, and the National Science Foundation, Alison spent last year living in northern Germany, conducting research on North Frisian, a Germanic language spoken in northern Germany. Her research focuses on how children acquire morphology, including grammatical gender and plural marking.

This lecture is a part of the Center for Global Studies Brown Bag Graduate Lecture Series which focuses on interdisciplinary graduate research.

Family Night: Nutrition

Join the teams at Penn State's America Reads and Center for Global Studies as we explore the topic of nutrition through story time, educational hands-on activities, and an exploration of global issues and concepts. Free Admission to the Discovery Space exhibits only during Family Nights.

An Ontology of Women's Labor: He-Yin Zhen and Anarcho-Feminism in Early Twentieth-Century China

Memory and Theater in Francoist Spain: Fuente Ovejuna to the tune of “Cara al sol”

Emboldened by Nationalist success in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), fascist directors, playwrights, and critics sought to revitalize the stagnant national theater and promote the values associated with the newly formed authoritarian regime. The memory of Spanish theater, particularly the remembering and restaging of seventeenth-century comedias, became a crucial part of this project. One play stands at the center of the debates over the theater's political and aesthetic regeneration: Lope de Vega’s Fuente Ovejuna (c. 1612-1614), a history play that dramatizes a village’s fifteenth-century rebellion against a tyrannical overlord. Drawing on press excerpts, editions of the play, and its definitive performance at the Teatro Español in 1944, my talk will examine how these conceptualizations of Fuente Ovejuna epitomized the changing direction of Spanish theater under the Francoist regime and reinforced the interplay of politics, historiography, and aesthetics.

Christopher Oechler is a doctoral student in the Department of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese. His dissertation explores the overlapping and contradictory roles of history and memory in seventeenth-century Spanish theater. He focuses on the thematic popularity of history in the work of playwrights such as Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina, and Calderón de la Barca and analyzes how the dramatization of prominent historical figures, including Charles V and Isabel the Catholic, comments on the structures of court historiography and collective memory during Spain’s imperial decline. His interests also extend to the staging of early modern history plays in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. His research has been made possible through support from the Institute for the Arts and Humanities.

This lecture is a part of the Center for Global Studies Brown Bag Graduate Lecture Series which focuses on interdisciplinary graduate research.

Family Night: Eric Carle's World

Join the teams at Penn State's America Reads and Center for Global Studies as we explore the world of Eric Carle through story time, educational hands-on activities, and an exploration of global issues and concepts. Free Admission to the Discovery Space exhibits only during Family Nights.

Flying Fish (Igillena Maluwo), a film by Sri Lankan filmmaker Sanjeewa Pushpakumara, has sparked controversy in the director’s home country. Despite winning critical acclaim at film festivals around the world since its premiere at the Rotterdam International Film Festival in 2011, the film was immediately banned after its Sri Lankan debut in Colombo in July 2013. Sri Lanka's Free Media Movement has released an official statement criticizing both the censorship of the film and the government’s ongoing investigation, calling these acts an attempt to “militarise arts and culture.”

Flying Fish depicts a country that has been torn apart by a long civil war. While the film is far from comfortable to watch, containing images of sex and violence that have been described as “shocking,” it is a candid commentary on the state of the nation in the midst of this 26-year war.

This event is sponsored by the Center for Global Studies, the Migration Studies Project, the Sri Lankan Student Association, and the University Libraries.

Updating the Advising Toolbox: Understanding the Complex Needs of Today's Students

The twelfth annual Professional Development Conference on Academic Advising on academic advising practices, approaches, and tools that can assist in meeting the needs of students from special populations, such as veterans; underprepared students; students with disabilities; distance learners; returning adult students; lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender students; and students transitioning from other institutions or through challenging personal circumstances.

Conference presenters will discuss and share valuable resources, research, and experiences to help attendees better understand and address the complex needs of special student populations, develop and maintain positive advising relationships, and

update our academic advising toolboxes in the process.

Chinese corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices in Africa: A new puzzle to Chinese decision makers

China has been Africa's largest trading partner (if not considering EU) since 2009, with bi-lateral trade volume nearly reaching 200 billion USD in 2012. More than 2,000 Chinese companies and over a million Chinese people are active in the continent today. However, whether Chinese trade and investment activities have brought social benefits to Africa is a highly debatable topic these years. Researchers argue that while China brings affordable goods, inexpensive capital and employment opportunities to Africa, the negative impact on local environment, labor relationship and local communities has caused rising tensions. Is China-Africa relationship sustainable in the long run? In this presentation, Lu will strive to explain corporate social responsibility (CSR) in Chinese perspective and in China-Africa business context.

Originally from China, Jinghao Lu completed a Masters of International Affairs and Bachelor of Arts in Sociology as a Schreyer Honors Scholar from the Pennsylvania State University. Jinghao has worked as a China-Africa analyst in Johannesburg, South Africa for the past two years. He planned and led high-level business trips involving Senior Executives of multination corporations seeking marketing and project negotiations in China and organized training programs and business conferences to bridge Africa and China business worlds. During this time has been interviewed by global media such as CNN, CCTV and The Guardian for his expertise on China-Africa trade.

Theorizing Literature from Japan, 1907

In 1907 budding novelist Natsume Soseki published Bungakuron (Theory of Literature), his attempt to produce a fully scientific theory of “literature” that would be valid for all places and all times. Relying on what were then the cutting-edge disciplines of psychology and sociology, he generated a model for understanding literature that bears a remarkable resemblance to recent theories of world literature advanced by such figures as Franco Moretti and Pascale Casanova. This talk will sketch in Soseki’s theory, exploring its overlap with those recent theories but also highlighting aspects in which it differs from them in significant ways.

Michael Bourdaghs is Professor of Modern Japanese Literature and Chair of the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. A native of Minnesota, he received his Ph.D. in East Asian Literature from Cornell University in 1996. He is the author of The Dawn That Never Comes: Shimazaki Toson and Japanese Nationalism (2003) and Sayonara Amerika, Sayonara Nippon: A Geopolitical Prehistory of J-Pop (2012). His translation of Kojin Karatani’s The Structure of World History: From Modes of Production to Modes of Exchange is forthcoming from Duke University Press in early 2014.

Poetry Reading by distinguished American poet

This event is free and open to the PSU community and general public. Sponsored by The Woskob Family Endowment in Ukrainian Studies, the Center for Global Studies, the Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages, the Creative Writing Program at PSU,

Please join us for a talk by Jakir Hossain, Post-Doctoral Scholar with the Center for Global Workers’ Rights. He will speak on the “Standard-Rights Nexus: Transforming Labor Standards into Workers’ Rights.” Jakir is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Bangladesh Studies at the University of Rajshahi.

This event is co-sponsored by the Center for Global Studies and the Democracy Institute. The Center for Global Workers’ Rights seeks to support research and activism on sweatshops, labor standards, and labor rights by creating a network of scholars and activists working on these issues around the world. For additional information: Jakir Hossain flyer Sept 12 event 2013 .pdf.